Annie's Annuals for hundreds of vegetable starts for home, community gardens and urban farms in Richmond, CA. 2014

Nutiva partners with Self-Sustaining Communities to provide for organic gardens in the backyards of transitional homes of Bary Dugar for the formerly incarcerated and the homeless in Richmond, CA. July, 2014.

Tom Burchell of Burchell Nursery does it again by making a donation of 320 pomegranate trees, olive trees and blueberry bushes specifically for the North Richmond Green Festival. Burchell Nursery (October, 2013)

Trees Donated

Welcome

The Self directs the functioning of the whole psyche in an integrated way. According to Carl Jung, conscious and unconscious are not necessarily in opposition to one another, but complement one another to form a totality, which is the Self.(Excerpt from Personality and Personal Growth 6th ed. Frager & Fadiman, 2005)

We are so fortunate to have been given a donation of 2.2 acres of land in San Pablo, California by Robert and Lim Duca. It was their intention to help further our work, and we eagerly look forward, in collaboration with USF Professor Seth Wachtel, to creating a meaningful, productive and inspirational site.

Near the gazebo on the Richmond Greenway at Harbour Way, small trees bagged in plastic were spread out on a bed of wood chips. Families and Richmond residents huddled together, examining the trees by type: cherry, nectarine, peach. The apple trees were long gone – they’d been snapped up by the early birds.

The Tree, Seed & Veggie Giveaway on April 5 was the fifth time that Self Sustaining Communities, a Richmond nonprofit that promotes locally grown food, has distributed hundreds of fruit, nut, and olive trees to Richmond families and other local gardeners. To date, SSC has distributed over 11,000 trees in Richmond, says Linda Schneider, the organization’s founder and executive director.

She founded SSC in 2009. The organization focuses on working with residents of low-income, high-crime neighborhoods to create sustainable systems, like rainwater harvest systems. SSC has opened three gardens in Atchison Village and the Iron Triangle. In each project, SSC engages residents of the neighborhood, including youth, elders, and the formerly incarcerated. “This is our part of helping the community be green and involved in community transformation,” Schneider says.

Families and tree lovers alike came for the vegetable and flower starts, hundreds of seed packets, and the main attraction – trees of multiple varieties.

Alfonzo Jones, 18, was one of the volunteers; it was his first time at a tree giveaway. “It’s great – it’s bigger than what I expected,” he said. “I’ve learned more about trees today than [ever] before.”

Jones and the volunteer team at the giveaway are part of a new organization, TRUPP, or The Remember Us People Project, which supports the re-entry efforts of recently released offenders. TRUPP works to transition formerly incarcerated people who are on probation or parole back into society by providing a place to stay upon release, as well as aid in finding jobs.

Barry Dugar is the founding director of TRUPP; he was inspired by friendships he developed while in prison. “I myself spent six years in prison,” he says. “The men inside would tell me, ‘You’re lucky, Barry. You have a place to stay [when you’re released], but we don’t.’” The conversations he had with his friends about going home and being on parole inspired Dugar to create a transition program.

Alfonzo Jones and Barry Dugar of TRUPP work together to ease the re-entry process for the formerly incarcerated in Richmond

Our aim is toward entirely sustainable urban environments. Thanks to Neli Maneva and Stas Manev for this rendering of our goal, prepared as a display for the Martin Luther King, Jr., Day of Service, January 20, 2014.

Self-Sustaining Communities (SSC) is a Richmond, CA, organization working with low-income residents and community members to create wide-scale, environmentally sustainable local food production in distressed and needy neighborhoods. These projects have engaged a wide spectrum of the community, from the mayor to recently released offenders, in a "from-the-ground-up process" to reclaim and rejuvenate abandoned and blighted parcels and make them hubs of productivity.

Watch the video below to understand what we do. Watch more videos at our youtube channel.

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Our Commitment

Our work/mission is to assist in creating a systemic change in the SF East Bay of Northern California which meets environmental, social, and sustainability needs by addressing those areas upon which survival is dependent, specifically food, energy, transportation, shelter and social inclusion. We focus on low-income, high crime areas, but are not necessarily limited thereto. We approach these areas as part of an integrated larger area where coming together to make a systemic change can effect greater well-being for all members of the community.

Given the collapse and dysfunction of the current economic situation, the unemployment, environmental issues and crime, creating a new model is an opportunity we have at hand, by utilizing grassroot efforts, community building and social technology, among others.